Optimal Placement of Power Factor Correction Capacitors Considering Transient Switching Events and Load Uncertainty

Abstract

Capacitors have long been used at certain locations in power systems to correct the power factor. Such an installation comes with many advantages that lead to optimal power operation. Beyond the power factor correction, capacitor installation on the power system buses helps regulate the voltage of the nearby buses and reduce the energy flow at the line, thus leading to energy loss minimization and increasing the system capacity. In many countries, power factor correction has attracted great interest among researchers and practitioners because of the tariff that requires industrial consumers to pay for their reactive power consumption. With all of these advantages, engineers might overlook the issues introduced by capacitor placement, and may fail to consider all the pertinent factors during the planning phase. In this work, the problem of optimal capacitor placement in electrical power systems is discussed. The objective function is to implement the lowest cost option that meets both the energy loss minimization and voltage regulating requirements. A new factor is considered during placement: the effect of the transient switching events when energizing and de-energizing the capacitor banks. Finally, the load uncertainty factor is examined and the resultant system is tested with extreme customer load values.